New Amerykah Part Two: Return Of The Ankh

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When Erykah Badu's fifth album, <i>New Amerykah, Pt. 2: Return of the Ankh</i>, dropped in 2010, it was widely held up as a complementary but philosophical opposite to its charged predecessor: Where <i>Part 1</i> was discordant and militant, this felt harmonious and beatific—a return, by some standard, to the neo-soul markers that defined her rise. But for Badu, love and the body have always been political. Her video for the lead single, "Window Seat"—which depicts the normally covered singer walking down a Dallas street, shedding her clothes until she's fully nude and then being gunned down—was intended to be a meditation on the woes of groupthink, character assassination, and the freedom of losing those things which weigh us down. The reception was mixed, but the attempt is a glimpse into how Badu has always used the emotional and the carnal as vehicles for the expression of power and liberation. In her hand, love and sex are both the question and the answer—her chains and her freedom. .

via Apple Music

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